Line #58 Main/ToiletHorror


1	%%%
2	%%
3	%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order.
4	%%
5	%%%
6	%% Image chosen via crowner in the Image Suggestion thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/crowner.php/ImagePickin/ImageSuggestions120
7	%% https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1452266899092104700
8	%% Please don't change or remove without starting a new thread.
9	%%
10	[[quoteright:350:[[Film/SilentHill https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sh_5.png]]]]
11	[[caption-width-right:350:''Occupado!'']]
12
13	-> ''"Rule #3: Beware of Bathrooms. Don't let them catch you with your pants down."''
14	-->-- '''Columbus''', ''Film/{{Zombieland}}''
15
16	In some works of modern media, bathrooms (especially public toilets) are excellent places for a [[NightmareFuel terrifying scene]] to occur. Many people feel vulnerable as they take care of intimate matters while partially-undressed. Since they often do this alone, it may stir dread about isolation. This trope plays on latent anxieties, ParanoiaFuel, and general {{squick}} many people have about bathrooms.
17
18	Common scenarios include (but not limited to) the presence of an unknown malicious entity, often a VengefulGhost, the discovery of a dead body, [[TomatoInTheMirror finding out that you are not what you appear to be]], [[{{Gorn}} violent scenes]] involving the murder of a character, or [[BodyHorror sickening sights]]. Whatever it is, it's unnerving and unexpected, and sometimes involves a JumpScare.
19
20	SceneryGorn is part of the reason for this. There's something evocative about white porcelain splattered with blood, [[BloodIsSquickerInWater water filled with blood]], and broken mirrors. These scenes often take place in a DisgustingPublicToilet for similar reasons.
21
22	A SuperTrope to DeadlyBath, PsychoShowerMurderParody and MirrorScare. May involve TheCanKickedHim if a toilet is the means for a violent death.
23
24	May overlap with CampingACrapper (getting attacked in a bathroom). Only examples that are PlayedForHorror beyond the usual suspense of a ChaseScene would count here. Compare also SearchingTheStalls. Compare with BathhouseBlitz where the victim is being stalked but the instigator is a mundane threat. See also {{Swirlie}} and TransTribulations, for bathrooms as a place of distress but not necessarily horror.
25
26	Not to be confused with ToiletHumour, though the two may overlap during a moment of MoodWhiplash.
27
28	----
29	!!Examples:
30
31	[[foldercontrol]]
32
33	[[folder:Advertising]]
34	* A [[PublicServiceAnnouncement PIF]] from Friends of the Earth in Scotland involves someone flushing a toilet and a [[BloodyHorror copious amount of blood]] leaking out of it afterwards as a way of speaking against cutting down mahogany trees for use in furniture.
35	[[/folder]]
36
37	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
38	* Polnareff of ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureStardustCrusaders'' encounters this a few times; at one point he's chased into a bathroom by a horde of zombies, and he's later attacked by an axe-wielding assassin who [[FountainOfYouth de-ages him into a child]] and attempts to drown him in a bathtub. It's PlayedForLaughs with the toilet in the Indian restaurant, which seems perfectly normal until [[spoiler:the pig living underneath sticks its head up through the toilet to say hello]], at which point Polnareff starts screaming, begs the waiter not to leave him alone in there, and the toilet gets the standard "menacing" UnsoundEffect usually applied to villains.
39	* During the Thriller Bark arc of ''Manga/OnePiece'' which takes place on a horror themed island, there is abit of a homage to what happens in bathrooms in horror movies. Nami while taking a shower is attacked by an invisible Absalom. Fortunately, she is saved before the pervert could do anything worse to her.
40	* In the second episode of ''Anime/GhostStories'', the kids meet Hanako-san and Aka Manto (see the Folklore section). One of the teachers gets sucked into the underworld through a toilet, and the same thing almost happens to Hajime.
41	[[/folder]]
42
43	[[folder:Fan Works]]
44	* ''Fanfic/DungeonKeeperAmi'': Arachne's spiders attacked people through the sewers and their toilets when she attacked Albrecht's kingdom.
45	[[/folder]]
46
47	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
48	* One segment in ''Film/TheABCsOfDeath'' has a kid dreaming about being in the restroom while his toilet turns into a man-eating monster.
49	* A major motif in ''Film/{{Candyman}}'' and its sequels, where the ghost of the title can only enter the realm of the living through [[MirrorMonster mirrors]], ideally bathroom mirrors. Naturally, frightening scenes in bathrooms - especially filthy, poorly-maintained bathrooms - are present throughout the series.
50	* In ''Film/CrimsonPeak'', HauntedHeroine Edith walks in on a ghost - with a meat cleaver still lodged in its skull - taking a bath. She later learns that [[spoiler: this is the ghost of her mother-in-law, murdered in the bath by [[SelfMadeOrphan her own son and daughter]] after she got wind of their [[BrotherSisterIncest incestuous affair]].]]
51	* The first death we see happen in ''Film/DeepRising'' happens after the glamorous cruise ship is shaken and people panic and run. A very scared woman locks herself in a bathroom and sits on the toilet, when something comes up from the toilet (though remains unseen) and attacks her, resulting in a large gush of blood splattering on the bathroom's mirror.
52	* In ''Film/FinalDestination'', Tod Wagner gets killed when a shower clothesline asphyxiates him.
53	* In ''Film/TheFly1986'', having just tossed his worried lover out of his loft/laboratory, Seth examines himself in his bathroom mirror, realizing that she was right about how bad he's come to look ever since he teleported himself. When he anxiously starts gnawing on a fingernail, it comes off in his mouth, and he then finds that ''all'' of his nails are coming loose while the fingers themselves are oozing pus. Terrified, he whispers to himself "Is this how it starts? Am I dying?" From there, he gets the InternalReveal that he's becoming a HalfHumanHybrid via his computer. Creator/DavidCronenberg deliberately set this sequence in a bathroom because so many people in real life first realize that ''something is wrong'' with their body in a bathroom.
54	* The SignatureScene of ''Film/{{Ghoulies}}'' is one of the eponymous goblin-like creatures coming out of a toilet. A fairly brief moment in the film itself, but it appeared on the cover, making it the main thing anyone knows about the movie. ''Film/GhouliesII'' and ''Film/GhouliesIIIGhouliesGoToCollege'' have similiar cover art as well, likewise showing monsters emerging from toilets.
55	* ''Film/{{Glorious}}'' is about a gloryhole in a public restroom that's actually a portal to an EldritchAbomination.
56	* In ''Film/TheGrudge 2'', after the murderous ghost invades the family's apartment, the boy hides in the bathroom and found his mother in the bathtub who seemed suspicious tells him to enjoy a nice warm bath. She then gets dragged into the water disappearing by the ghost.
57	* ''Film/It2017'' expands on the bathroom scene from the book: the titular monster manifests PrehensileHair from the sink drain to grab Beverly, then sprays a fountain of HighPressureBlood that covers her and the room. Subsequently played for BlackComedy when her friends come over and matter-of-factly help her clean up all the mess.
58	* In ''Film/KillerKlownsFromOuterSpace'' the largest of the long-necked popcorn Klown babies reveals itself by emerging out of Debbie's toilet before attacking her.
59	* ''[[Film/LookWhosTalking Look Who's Talking Too]]'' Mikey needs to be toilet-trained due to a NightmareSequence in which he saw the toilet morphing into Mr. Toilet Man, a disgusting Creator/MelBrooks-voiced [[AnimateInanimateObject living toilet bowl]] with huge vampire fangs that claims the intention of [[GroinAttack biting off his "tushy"]] when he goes peeing.
60	* In ''Film/MemoriesOfMurder'', the schoolchildren claim there's a serial killer that lives in the school outhouses. The police entertain this seriously enough to investigate the toilets.
61	* In ''Film/MidnightMovie'', the second time the killer escapes from the film, he attacks Sully in the restroom and gores out his heart. The patrons still in the cinema get to watch this occur on the screen.
62	* One of the iconic scenes of ''Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet'' is set in a bathroom in which Freddy's razor-gloved hand emerges from a bathtub still occupied by a dozed off Nancy.
63	* The first horror moment in ''Film/{{Psycho}}'' is the infamous (and [[PsychoShowerMurderParody much-parodied]]) scene in which Marion Crane takes a shower in her motel room and gets stabbed to death. Probably the trope maker for film, since earlier movies were generally [[NobodyPoops very shy about even acknowledging bathrooms existed]]; supposedly, ''Psycho'' was the first film to ever show a toilet being flushed (and what's being flushed is just paper).
64	* ''Franchise/{{Saw}}'': The main "[[DeadlyGame game]]" of the [[Film/SawI first movie]] takes place in an abandoned bathroom. Said bathroom is seen again in ''Film/SawII'' and ''Film/Saw3D''.
65	* ''Film/TheShining'' has Jack discover the ghost of one of the guests in the bathroom of her hotel room, and Jack speaks to the ghost of the caretaker in another bathroom.
66	* One of the more memorable scenes in ''Film/SilentHill'' takes place in a bathroom in which janitor monster resides.
67	* Spoofed in ''Film/SpiceWorld'', when the sinister paparazzi photographer Damien climbs out of the toilet, in the mansion where the Spice Girls are staying.
68	* The bathroom in ''Film/Thir13enGhosts'' looks normal from the regular human perspective. However, from the ghost perspective, it is completely covered in blood splatter and occupied by the self-mutilated Angry Princess.
69	* The outbreak in ''Film/ZombieAssToiletOfTheDead'' is caused by one of the main characters eating a parasitical worm taken from a fish [[WeightLossHorror hoping it'll help her stay slim]]. Instead, it causes her a diarrhea attack that she unloads in an outhouse toilet, provoking the rise of feces-covered undead.
70	* ''Film/{{Zombieland}}'' features one of the Rules: [[GenreSavvy "Beware of Bathrooms"]]. As an example, we then see a gas station attendant being attacked by a zombie while he was on a stall.
71	[[/folder]]
72
73	[[folder:Folklore]]
74	* Japanese UrbanLegends are just fond of this trope in general. Ghouls lurking in toilets include:
75	** Aka Manto, a spirit in a yellow mask and red cape who asks if you want [[Main/DeadlyEuphemism a red or blue shirt. ]] [[Main/MortonsFork If you say red, he will lacerate your back. If you say blue, he will strangle you.]]
76	** Kashima Reiko, the VengefulGhost of a girl who was run over by a train. She has no legs, carries a SinisterScythe and asks people, "Where are my legs?". Any answer other than "On the railway tracks." will result in death. The better-known version of this story, Teke Teke, is an aversion, being found everywhere, not just toilets.
77	** There are some ghost stories in Japan which tell of a ghostly hand that emerges from a toilet to touch people in the behind when they relieve themselves. Said ghost stories are the basis of ??? from ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda''.
78	** ''Hanako-san of the Toilet'' (or just ''Hanako-san'') is a Japanese {{Urban Legend\|s}} that has been around since the 1950s. It's about a little girl who died in a bathroom stall, commonly either due to a bombing during World War II, an accident, or a murder. Her spirit still haunts the bathrooms where she died. If you walk into the third stall of a girl's room that is on the third floor, ask "Are you in there Hanako-san?", and knock three times she'll say "I'm here". What happens next varies, but it usually involves the person being dragged down the toilet.
79	** The [[Main/OurGoblinsAreDifferent Akaname]] are a subversion. Despite lurking in toilets and being used as bogeymen, they're mostly harmless creatures who live off bathroom dirt.
80	* There's an UrbanLegend that claims that if you go to certain bathrooms, close your eyes, and spin around three times while chanting "Bloody Mary Bloody Mary", Bloody Mary, a VengefulGhost, will appear and try to kill you.
81	[[/folder]]
82
83	[[folder:Literature]]
84	* In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheChamberOfSecrets'', students avoid a certain bathroom because an unpleasant (read: "melodramatically fretful", not "dangerous") ghost lives there. While this isn't really played for horror, eventually is revealed that said bathroom is the gateway to the Chamber of Secrets, home of a mysterious monster that's been petrifying students. It also turns out said ghost was murdered in that bathroom.
85	* From the Creator/StephenKing universe.
86	** ''Literature/{{It}}'': When Beverly Marsh is in the bathroom, the titular monster speaks to her through the sink drain, [[VoiceChangeling mimicking the voices]] of her dead classmates and telling her that she'll be joining them soon.
87	** "Sneakers" in ''Literature/NightmaresAndDreamscapes'': The protagonist notices that one specific stall of his office building's bathrooms is always occupied by a man with a distinctive pair of sneakers and discovers the hard way that the man is the ghost of a drug dealer who was killed some years prior by [[EyeScream being stabbed through one of his eyes with a pencil]].
88	** "A Very Tight Place" in ''Literature/JustAfterSunset'': The protagonist is lured into a portable toilet like a hostile neighbor, tipped over an embankment, and left to die inside. The story deals with how he escapes the portable toilet and exacts his revenge.
89	* In the final novella of ''Literature/LabyrinthsOfEcho'', Melifaro hunts down a "toilet demon": a malevolent ghost that compelled people visiting a bathroom to commit bizarre suicides. Afterwards, he realizes that toilets are a perfect place to ambush and MindControl people, since everyone normally lowers their defenses there.
90	* ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'': There's a Hawthorne Cottage bathroom that's home to a demonic entity.
91	[[/folder]]
92
93	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
94	* ''Series/{{Bones}}'' has an episode where the VictimOfTheWeek turns up when a kid who seems to be in the middle of potty training goes into the bathroom and gets terrified by blood and body parts coming up from the toilet. The team, of course, has to figure out where they came from and find the rest of the body.
95	* The disturbing reveal of the TwistEnding of ''Series/TwinPeaks'' takes place in a bathroom. [[spoiler: After emerging from the Black Lodge, Cooper goes in the bathroom and creepily repeats "How's Annie?" into the mirror, laughing maniacally and giving a NightmareFace, revealing that he is an EvilDoppelganger come to wreak havoc on the world.]] The whole scene is filled with SurrealHorror.
96	[[/folder]]
97
98	[[folder:Video Games]]
99	* ''A Dump In The Dark'' has you playing as a pair of buttocks through hell, connected to Earth by a toilet, killing monsters with your feces.
100	* In the ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' games, there is a ghostly/zombiefied hand that appears out of toilets called [[MyNameIsQuestionMarks ???]] which is based on some Japanese ghost stories.
101	* A variation famously opens ''VideoGame/{{Fahrenheit}}'', with a brutal stabbing murder perpetrated on a random unsuspecting man at a urinal by the (possessed) player character during the opening cutscene that the player must then quickly clean and cover up.
102	* ''VideoGame/{{OMORI}}'': Looking at the bathroom mirror at night will show Something and a ghostly form of Mari behind Sunny. [[spoiler:On Three Days Left, Basil has a mental breakdown in his bathroom after he learns Sunny is moving away.]]
103	* ''Shinsei Toire no Hanako-san'' is a ([[NoExportForYou Japan-only exclusive]]) PointAndClick horror game where you play as one of three schoolgirls investigating the "Hanako-san" urban legend (see Folklore folder) in your school's allegedly haunted washroom.
104	* ''Franchise/SilentHill'' is obsessed with this trope. This is based off of a common anxiety Japanese people grew up with as kids, who saw the traditional squatting toilet as a bottomless pit where nothing could escape.
105	** ''VideoGame/SilentHill1'' has a mutilated corpse strung up in the school's Otherworld bathroom.
106	** ''VideoGame/SilentHill2'' has the chance for James to hear a [[JumpScare loud scream]] in the prison bathroom.
107	** ''VideoGame/SilentHill3'' has a bathroom stall ''filled'' with blood.
108	** In ''VideoGame/SilentHill4TheRoom'', the entrance door to the CrapsackWorld of Silent Hill and the only way Henry Townshend can go out the room he's trapped, is in a big hole/portal made in his bathroom, which became more and more creepy during the game.
109	** ''VideoGame/SilentHillHomecoming'' has the Nurse monster first appear in a bathroom stall.
110	** ''VideoGame/SilentHills'' has the infamous talking fetus in the bathroom sink.
111	* In ''{{VideoGame/Slender}}'', there is an outdoor bathroom with cramped, twisting spaces that make it easy for Slenderman to take you by surprise.
112	* Subverted in ''VideoGame/YokaiWatch''. Toiletta (called "Hanako-san" in Japan, based on a well-known urban legend of a ghost who haunts bathrooms) has lost her edge because kids aren't easily scared anymore.
113	[[/folder]]
114
115	[[folder:Visual Novels]]
116	* ''VisualNovel/GoForAPunchSakiSanobashi'' is set in a bathroom within an abandoned school where the five girls go to kill themselves with poison gas. Then one of them goes back to get the chemicals in the car, and doesn't come back. The others realize they are locked in the bathroom with no hope of escape, and what little was left of their sanity quickly deteriorates until they off themselves.
117	* In ''VisualNovel/SpiritHunterNG'', Akira's bathroom sees plenty of spooky action. The Urashima Woman spirit can only appear near water, so she haunts his bathroom until he appeases her. His cousin Ami was also kidnapped by [[BigBad Kakuya]] while in his bathroom- in the late-game it's revealed that [[spoiler:she was trapped inside Akira's bathroom mirror; after Akira rescues her, Kakuya drags him in there himself]].
118	[[/folder]]
119
120	[[folder:Web Animation]]
121	* ''WebAnimation/{{Flicker}}'': The cast finds [[spoiler:Liza]]'s dead body in the bathroom, with her having been drowned in the toilet.
122	[[/folder]]
123
124	[[folder:Webcomics]]
125	* ''Webcomic/HyperboleAndAHalf'': PlayedForLaughs in "Skeleton Man." After hearing a scary story, Allie thinks the monster is hiding in the school bathroom. From then on, she tries to avoid the room as much as possible.
126	[[/folder]]
127
128	[[folder:Web Original]]
129	* In ''WebVideo/CryptTV's'' introductory video to the monster Look-See, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUdR6vMucHU "The Wedding Hand"]], a woman is trapped in a bathroom stall as the Look-See comes to get her. Forced to flush her wedding ring down the toilet to appease the monster, she snatches it back at the last moment, and is promptly killed.
130	* ''{{WebVideo/Criticized}}'': Arthur Lemments takes Darian Stonehall to a public bathroom (probably at the parking lot where he subdued him) after knocking him out with his stun gun. The majority of the video is spent there, and it's where Arthur tortures Darian.
131	[[/folder]]
132
133	[[folder:Western Animation]]
134	* PlayedForLaughs ([[BlackComedy dark ones]]) in ''WesternAnimation/BigMouth'' where Nick and Andrew are forced to use a gas station restroom during a family vacation to Florida. Not only is it a DisgustingPublicToilet, but they also find evidence that someone was ''murdered'' in there.
135	* PlayedForLaughs in ''WesternAnimation/TheGrimAdventuresOfBillyAndMandy'', when Pud'n mistakes [[ItMakesSenseInContext Billy disposing a skeleton model in the toilet]] as a gory incident.
136	* In ''WesternAnimation/PhantomInvestigators'', the second-floor girls' bathroom at Lugosi Junior High is rumored to be haunted, which is confirmed once students start being sucked down one of the toilets. Said toilet turns out to contain a portal to the [=NetherRealm=].
137	* In the ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998'' episode "Power-Noia", HIM gives Buttercup a nightmare out of her fear of spiders that takes place in a bathroom.
138	* PlayedForLaughs in a ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken'' parody of ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'', with Dumpelstiltskin, "a creature not of this world, but a user of its bathrooms". A man goes to use the toilet in an office building when a monster stomps in, tries to enter his stall, then enters the one beside him. After [[ToiletHumor an incredibly loud and lengthy bowel movement]] that causes the lights to flicker and ceiling tiles to fall, the creature asks him to pass the toilet paper roll, then exits, leaving a crater where the other toilet had been.
139	[[/folder]]

Context Main / ToiletHorror